Everyone at Hogwarts knew Draco Malfoy and Emma Hawthorne couldn't stand each other.
Since first year, they'd been rivals in everything—dueling club, potion-brewing, even House Points (despite both being in Slytherin). Emma, with her fierce red curls, freckles, and sharp tongue, never let Draco's smugness go unchecked. And Draco? He made it his mission to make her life as irritating as possible. Insults, pranks, pointed smirks in the corridors—it was all part of their war.
But something changed the summer before sixth year.
When the Hogwarts Express rolled in that September, Draco barely recognized her.
Emma stepped onto the platform taller, confident, and still wearing that stubborn glint in her sapphire-blue eyes—but everything else was different. Her hair, once wild and uncontrollable, now cascaded in soft waves. Her robes fit a little neater. Her presence felt... magnetic. She wasn't the loud, hotheaded girl he used to throw jinxes at for fun. She was suddenly composed. Elegant. Dangerous in a new way.
And it messed with Draco's head more than he liked to admit.
He couldn't stop looking at her. In Potions, he watched the way she furrowed her brow while slicing belladonna root. In Defense Against the Dark Arts, he stared when she deflected spells with effortless precision. In the common room, he found himself listening when she laughed.
He was doomed.
So, of course, he did the only thing a proud, bitter Malfoy could do—he doubled down on being horrible.
"Enjoying your little makeover, Hawthorne?" he sneered one day outside the Great Hall. "Trying to impress someone? Must be hard when no one's interested."
Emma raised an eyebrow, unfazed. "Jealous, Malfoy? You're staring again."
Caught off guard, Draco turned a slight shade of pink. "In your dreams."
But he was.
He dreamed of her more than he cared to admit.
He hated the flutter in his chest when she walked by. Hated the way his fingers twitched to brush a strand of her hair away. Hated how the girl he once loathed now haunted his every thought like a hex he couldn't shake.
And the worst part?
Emma might've known.
Because the only thing more dangerous than a Slytherin boy with a secret... was a Slytherin girl who suspected it.